Cultural Barriers And The Way Out For China's Modern Democratic Construction

From the overthrow of monarchy in the Revolution of 1911 to the foundation of socialism in China, China's democratic construction has made great progress. Especially, after reform and opening-up, with the gradual establishment and improvement of market economy system, China's democratic construction has been constantly advanced. For instance, the People's Congress System has been gradually improved, the People's status have been promoted, the basic democratic construction has been moved far , and the mass-election, the direct election, the campaign, the margin election and other measures have been carried out in different levels throughout the whole nation and have achieved good results. But at the same time, many problems have been constantly exposed, such as, government intervention in the election, buying and selling votes, bribery at an election, black box operation, less people's participation in elections. The above problems can inspire us to think: what are deep factors of constituting of effective democracy? Throughout the world, we also face such confusions, which new democracies cannot be effectively operated, even democracy collapses, where are reasons? These include economy and policy etc. From a cultural perspective, this paper, through the text and cases analysis, analyzes and examines the barriers of democracy in China .This paper can provide some useful reference on theory and practice for the development of democracy in China.This paper aims at elaborating two popular democratic concepts - program democracy and Substantive democracy ,after the explanation of their cultural rationality, analyzing the relationship between democracy and culture, organizing all sorts of arguments about the relationships between Confucian culture and democracy which appear in the present academia , then mainly discussing important cultural factors which effect our country's democratic construction currently: the lack of law spirit, the weak in subject consciousness and the rooted bureaucratic culture.With regard to the modern change of traditional cultural, there are a lot of controversies in academia, the author of this paper summarizes and analyses: endogenous development mode stresses on seeking democratic construction basis from the interior of the traditional culture. This pattern has strong consciousness of cultural subject and cultural inheritance; however, it is old diehard as well as unilaterally emphasizing on endogenous development and rejecting the impact of globalization. Creative transformation model of traditional culture absorbs the domestic and foreign advanced experience. It accords with current cultural development path of creative transforming on traditional culture. But these two kinds of cultural transformation modes unilateral emphasize on culture and culture docking, without noticing the possibility of culture docking. The author strongly agrees with the adaptability of change model in traditional culture. This model stresses on basing on practice, promoting the culture development through boosting modern market economy and democratic political system. In the last part of the paper mainly discusses two points: one is based on practice, so as to promote the reform of the economic system; the other brings the change of the values into development, heavily relying on the national power, and achieves the internalization of advanced culture through education.